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Diplomatic double deal
From Neville de Silva in London
Sri Lanka's High Commission in London is costing the tax-payer an extra £10,000 (about Rs 1.45 million) a month because of the Foreign Ministry's unprecedented policy of replacing over a dozen locally-recruited staff with imports from Sri Lanka.

The additional spending comes from having to pay two sets of salaries to a dozen or so locally recruited staff and their replacements sent from Colombo by the Foreign Ministry, doubling non-diplomatic junior staff at the London High Commission.

So today there are two persons supposedly doing the same tasks that were earlier performed by one.

Former diplomats I met in Colombo last month could not remember a single incident since independence in 1948 when such a significant number of locally recruited staff were terminated and replaced with staff sent from Colombo.

"This is certainly unprecedented, if it is not a joke. It seems that low-level non diplomatic jobs are also being politicised and embarrassing us in the host country, the UK," one retired diplomat said.

The Sunday Times broke the story last May when it reported that the Foreign Ministry had terminated the services of several long-standing local staff at the High Commission and were preparing to replace them with persons from a coastal electorate south of Colombo.

The Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry, through its diplomatic mission here, applied to the British Foreign Office for 13 visas to send staff from Colombo including drivers with no British driving licences.

The British Foreign Office then stood firm and queried why home-based staff were required to replace those recruited in the UK and whether those whose jobs were to be terminated will return to Colombo.

The High Commission in London could give no such assurance because most of the locally recruited staff-some who have served the mission for 15 - 20 years or more, are permanent residents of Britain.

The principled stand taken by the British Foreign Office forced Colombo to back down and embarrassingly withdraw its first application, informed sources said.
Thereafter the Foreign Ministry applied to have the 13 persons to be sent from Colombo to be considered locally-recruited staff and assured that they would return home at the end of their three-year contract.

These new recruits, most of who arrived here in June, are being paid a salary of £800-1000 (about Rs 116,000-145,000).

Informed sources say that one of the persons sent here as a driver has already failed his first test- written exam- for a British driver's licence but this could not be independently confirmed.

Meanwhile most of the 13 local staff asked to leave by July still continue to work at the High Commission. Some of them have used their own political contacts and influence to get extensions which will allow some to work for up to another six months.

The result is that the Sri Lankan tax payer already burdened with rising living costs at home are forced to cough up an estimated £10,000 more a month to accommodate political cronies and hangers-on, a prominent Sri Lankan living in London said.

"This is an absolute cock-up. Imagine if the United Nations is to be run like some personal fiefdom", he said.

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